


Scarf and Feather

by Tribs



Series: No Longer in Progress Series Parts [5]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Alt: Tales of Nomad, Averted Soul Reconsolidation, Canon Divergence, Gen, Raptor HCs, Recalled Violent Childhood, Sibling Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 15:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19212619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tribs/pseuds/Tribs
Summary: A brief divergence away from Pict's side of things, to give a look in on his employers from the prior chapter.





	1. Agathocles

Year 137 5E (47 years old)

* * *

 

I sat in the stands of the arena, batting a cheap fan from the souvenir cart in a futile attempt to cool myself.

Ly roared an inaugural challenge below, his hulking plate armor a fearsome sight only matched by his tower shield and flail. The sandworm which he was to fight writhed against winch-bound chains, rusted things that just barely kept it restrained as they pulled it free of storage.

Even with its size, it would hardly have an advantage here: it couldn’t burrow far, and soon enough, instinct would send it crashing into the barriers of the field. A terrible, self-inflicted pain that would only be suffered in a bid for life. 

_ The price for being caught. One deserved. _

Less a fight, more an execution of the weak, but the crowd was ecstatic all the same. 

**_“RAP-TOR, RAP-TOR, RAP-TOR!”_ **

I spent another moment in the heat, enough for him to see me and raise a hand in greeting, before the fight began.

Then I excused myself.

 

* * *

 

“Agath!”

I looked up as he removed his helmet - painfully red even below the blood; such overt Zamorakian iconography, but he was never subtle - and tossed it to the side, marking his bedsheet with a streak of gore and sticky sand.

“I see you won.”

“I see your bastardous mentor hasn’t killed you yet.”

_ Yet. _  I shrugged.  “He’s more intent on theorizing. Talking. Never doing.”

“Then kill him.”

_ You always say it so casually. _  “It’s not so simple.”

“It is.”  He took a cool rag from his icebox and began to rub his neck down.  “He is weak, and you are strong. You are not content with how he performs his duty towards you. You’ve said it before, that he lacks vision.”

“Ly.”

“Kill him, harvest his boons, and be done with it.”

I shook my head, even while what he said tickled some part of my mind.  “I’m not here about him.”

“Hm?”

I pulled the lockbox from my bag, sat it down on the arm of the chair, and lifted back the lid, drawing his gaze. 

“So you  _ did  _ get it open!”

“I did.”

“Just papers, and a… Is this a feather?”

“It is. And the papers are  _ letters. _ Correspondence between Nurn and another researcher. No name, only a ‘C’. They all trace back to Sophanem.”

He grinned, the snaggletooth we shared glinting in the light of too many candles.  “So, you took time off your studies to traipse across the desert with me?”

“If you are willing to.”

“I would  _ relish it.” _


	2. Agathocles

How he survived the carpet trip in armor, I wasn’t sure. Half the time I’d been forced to resort to sitting under the shade of his cloak, while he just sat straight-backed and looked out across the sea of warm colors and speckled greens.

While the old question had grown rare with the onset of adulthood, and was nearly obsolete by now, it was this sort of thing that always drudged it back up. 

The one about whether or not he was real.

Which, was ridiculous. I knew better. He had a viable arena career and was able to physically shove twinks into countertops. 

“Nearly there now.”

I looked up to where he had gestured, and caught sight of the walls of Sophanem cresting into view. 

“And you are certain we’ll be let through the gates?”

“Of course they will. They’ll allow  _ me _ in.”

“Of course they will.”

 

* * *

 

I unpacked our bags and waterskins as Ly struck up a brisque conversation with one of the guards, the language unfamiliar beyond the bits and phrases he’d given to me through osmosis.

_ Have to pester him for the rest of it, one of these days. _

“Useful development.”

“What?”

He snatched up one of the skins, flipped his visor open, and downed several harsh mouthfuls before recapping it.  “Quarantine was lifted. Whatever it was was declared non-contagious.”

“Then how did so many fall under its purview?”

“Curse, probably. Or food poisoning.”

“Neither of those are epidemics.”

“A curse is not an epidemic?”

“Not typically, no. They’re more akin to a poisoning.”

He gave me a skeptical look before his visor snicked shut.  “Well. I’ve secured directions to where the paper’s return address is.”

I clapped his shoulder and gestured for him to walk on.  “Handy, as always.”

“Since my birth.”

 

* * *

 

_ Suppose it makes sense, for a necromancer. _

Ly thumbed through the letters again, frowning.  “This doesn’t-”

“Yes, it does.”

“It is a tomb entrance, not a home.”

“Think it through.”

“... No, that is still ridiculous. You don’t need all this.”

“You live under the arena.”

“That’s not the same.”

He handed the papers back, and I tucked them away as Ly hailed the guard at the entrance.

They conversed, not exactly in a polite fashion, for several long minutes before their tones shifted. I rolled my eyes as Ly signed a produced sheet of postcard, hefted his flail across his shoulder, and started to squeeze through the gap in the limestone entryway. 

With staff readied, I followed suit.

 

* * *

 

Leadership was swiftly handed over once we entered. 

The sand beneath us was tinted green, like whatever held sway over the large scorpions, giant insects, and impish dust demons had seeped into the very foundation. Or, had always been here, only covered up by the temples and homes above in a bid to choke it out.

Gnarled stone and chewed wood entombed us, but I couldn’t help but notice what it did not entomb: the usual trappings of storage for the dead. No coffins, no urns, no displays of bones or preserved organs in such a way as to show respect. 

I paused as we descended a slope to a deeper sub-level, tapping the blade of my staff against the wall.

“Ly?”

He looked up, extracting his flail from the crushed abdomen of a bioluminescent reptile.  “What?”

“Isn’t here just as strange to you?”

He shrugged.  “Your plan to come. I’m here for the ride, not for the masonry.”  He crouched down, plunged his gloved fingers deep in the lizard’s gullet, and worked his way through like a grim fetishtist.

“... I’ve found a rock.”

“Lovely.”

“You want it?”

He held it up to my magelight, and turned it to catch the veins of gold on blue beneath the neck gore.

I pinched my nose, exhaled, then extended a palm.  “I suppose. Might have some use. As a bezoar, perhaps.”

He threw it, and to my immediate regret, I caught it. 

_ Revolting. _

It would need to be tucked into one of the envelopes, or it risked making a filthy, smelly mess of all my things. I flipped the lockbox open again, and paused.

“Ly?”

“Hm?”

“Did you take the feather?”

“Absolutely not.”

_ Did we drop it? That would be no good. It must have had some importance, or it wouldn’t have been in there. _

“Ag.”

It was sharp, a warning tone. I looked up, and felt my spine ice over.

The lizards had abandoned the passage, with the last evidence of a tail slithering off down a distant hallway. Teal, grey, white-marked figures filed in like a grim procession, each lit by their own terrible internal illumination. 

Jackals, cats, crocodiles, scarabs. Those that looked human, clad in hazy mimicry of the guards on the surface, stepped through the growing crowd of ethereal beasts until they found the front and center. 

One, eyes a harder blue-green than its companions, took a position before Lysimachus. It only met his chest, but the way they sized each other up felt wrong.

Deeply wrong.

“Ly, hold-”

Quick as a viper, he shouted and reared back, his flail a blurring arc.

An arc that died as the blade of a glaive sprouted through the center of his chestplate.

_ “LY!” _

_ ‘Were you just letting them?!’ _

_ No. _

_ ‘Kill him.’ _

My stomach curled, bile rising, as he crumpled. Memories that weren’t mine tried to slink in where they didn’t belong. The figures drew closer, hands curling down as if to take him.

_ I don’t want it. _

A barmaid. 

The sandworm fight.

_ ‘I’d relish it.’ _

_ ‘Ag.’ _

The rock in my palm seared through my glove, snapping my head back into place. I snarled, lunged, and caught my fingers on the curve of his gorget, before we unraveled.


	3. Agathocles

Year 104 5E (14 years old)

* * *

 

_ Can’t breathe.  _

Someone stronger held me by my throat, too high, too tight. I could hear him laughing behind the wool-feeling sinking into my ears, see him shaking past the dark splotches scattering across my eyes, and felt someone faster slam their heel against my aching ribs.

_ Can’t- _

_ Can’t. _

_ “PUT HIM DOWN!” _

I crumpled in a heap as a board cracked across bone. My stomach felt empty, more then it already had, and churned in pain as I dry-heaved into the grass. 

“DON’T.”

_ Crack! _  A whimper. Fleeing footsteps.

_ “EVER.” _

_ Crack! _

_ “TOUCH US.” _

The stronger one fell silent, and each swing of the board grew wetter. Thin bile crept up my throat as I looked to the figure between me and the battered lump of cloth and red, spread in a wide stance like he was chopping wood.

I flinched as he finally fell quiet, shaking, and tossed the bloodied instrument down to the side. He turned, fists digging into the back of my shirt as he drug me up, eyes welled with frustrated tears.

_ “Were you just letting them?!” _


	4. Agathocles

Year 137 5E (47 years old)

* * *

 

The teleport was messy - we landed somewhere on the temple floor above - but I didn’t have time to care. He was heavy, hard to flip over, but adrenaline accomplished half the work. I tore his helmet free and dug my nails into his cheek, prying his jaw loose through the skin until his mouth was wide enough to fit the stone.

_Stay. In there._

I could hear the pulsation rattling his teeth, growing louder as the unwanted tide of memories subsided, forced into the temporary reliquary.

_Stay where I put you._

 

* * *

 

I didn’t have the money to bribe the priests to silence.

And they had questions. Not any I could answer, not truthfully. But they hadn’t been hostile. Just that sickeningly pathetic flavor of pity, empty mourning, meaningless words of comfort.

And I now had a brother stashed, loosely embalmed, inside a large jar of honey on a cart.

I worked at the side of my cheek, running my fingers across the rim of the lid, chest twinging with unease even as I set my jaw and took the cart handle.

_Hopefully this is all just an unpleasant nap to you._

_Blasted imbecile._

_Hold on._

 

* * *

 

The cart clattered in the aftershock of teleportation, thin wheels canted against the ritualistic grooves carved into the floor of the obelisk room.

“Master.”

He stood at one of the desks, and turned like he’d been waiting for us. Blue-green eyes flickered against the darkness.

“I am already well aware.”

The walk our way was slow, agonizing, deliberate. Something boiled in the back of my head, and I marched to meet him halfway, dropping the cart handle in favor of collecting my staff.

_‘Lacks vision.’_

“Instruct me on how to repair him.”

He looked up to meet my face, expression like stone, eyes cut to slits.  “Whatever it is you decided to push your _pathetic_ noses into, I’m more than certain that this is the fate he deserved. Perhaps you as well.”

_‘Chain. Weighing you down.’_

I grabbed the neck of his robe, pulling him up to snarl against his face.   _“Fix him.”_

He didn’t flinch.  “A waste. You would do better to re-absorb him. Allot the materials elsewhere.”

_‘Kill him.’_

I set him down.

He looked past me and spat in the direction of the cart. Snide.

_Always theorizing. Always talking._

_Never doing._

His staff met my throat at the same time mine met his. The obelisk hissed and sparked, not unlike a third contender.

_I will begin to do._


End file.
